


Naughty Children

by ladykiki



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Pre-Season/Series 01, Supernatural Summergen Fic Exchange 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24919786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladykiki/pseuds/ladykiki
Summary: Casefic. While John’s out on a case, Sam and Dean get caught up in a hunt—and have to figure out how to stay alive and kill the monster. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s CPS.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26
Collections: Supernatural Summergen 2018





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for troll-la-la for supernatural summergen back in 2018. It's a really awesome challenge/gift exchange on livejournal, so if you like gen fic and haven't checked it out yet, you should do that. The deadline for this year's submissions is coming up, which means there should be new fic being posted starting in week or two.

Dean didn’t think anything of it when the first kid disappeared. The kid was fourteen, tall for his age, with dark hair and dark eyes, and a mean look about his mouth—even when he was smiling, like he was in the picture the news sprayed across the dinky TV he and Sam had found on the side of the road and hauled back to their apartment. Dillon Thomas, the ticker-tape under his picture said. 

“Hey, Sammy.” He slapped at his brother’s side, caught his arm by accident and sent his pencil clattering across the battered coffee table they’d dragged back from the dumpster.

“What?” Sam snapped. Dean didn’t need to look to see the scowl on the kid’s face, so he didn’t, just jerked his chin toward the TV. 

“You know him?”

The silence stretched, so Dean darted a glance at his baby brother. The kid was frowning at the TV, which was only to be expected from Bleeding-Heart Sam when someone was in trouble, but the tight set to his jaw wasn’t, and neither was the tight curl of his right hand. 

“Sammy?” he prodded. 

His brother’s expression smoothed out. “No, not really. He just,” Sam continued when Dean didn’t stop looking at him. “He picked on some of the little kids, sometimes. Him and his friends.”

Sam being a shrimp, that was a fairly alarming prospect. Of the “find the kid and beat him down” variety. “Picked on, how?”

Sam shrugged, one shouldered—the shoulder closest to Dean, even, like he wanted to shrug Dean off, which didn’t convince Dean he was wrong. “Called ‘em names. Taunted ‘em. Shoved ‘em around a little. The usual.”

“The usual” usually involved a little more than that, in Dean’s experience, and Sam’s, and Sam wasn’t meeting his eyes while he said it. “He do any of that to you?” he demanded. 

“No,” Sam muttered, short and sharp, already focused back on his homework, stretching blindly for this pencil. “I took care of it,” he added. Which actually was reassuring. If not just a little bit ominous considering the kid was missing and Sammy didn’t care.

He studied Sam closely, looking for—hell if he knew what. 

“Stop it, Dean,” Sam grumbled. He’d make a great mom, one day, with those eyes in the back of his head. 

“What? I’m trying to decide if I should check under the bed.” He smirked when Sam frowned at him thrown by the non-sequitur. After a moment, he lifted his brows. “Kid disappears and you don’t care?”

Sam huffed, rolled his eyes. “It’s probably a prank.”

And, yeah. Dean was thinking he owed this kid a beat-down if—when—he showed back up. Give him a little taste of his own medicine. He turned back to the TV, flipped the channel looking for something that wasn’t news. 

*

The second kid was a different story. It was Dillon Thomas’ younger brother, for one thing, and he’d been taken from a house that was under police surveillance—because the cops hadn’t believed Mr. Thomas wasn’t good for it. 

They really didn’t believe him, after Corey disappeared. They didn’t think there was any way someone could have gotten into the house and out again without them noticing. They said the perpetrator had to have been in the house, and the kids had to still be there, too. 

Dean didn’t know how he felt about the rest of the family, but he felt bad for Mrs. Thomas. It had to suck, being the only one trying to hold things together while your family tore itself apart.

It had to suck worse when the people who were supposed to protect you were the ones tearing your life apart. They kept Mr. Thomas locked up while they took the house apart. And when they didn’t find the kids there, they moved onto the yard. 

Dean wondered what they’d do when they ran out of yard.

*

“What do you think happened to them?” Sam asked. 

They’d kicked around the apartment after dinner, but their TV only got five channels, only two of them with decent programming after five, and—somehow—having more space than they would’ve had in a motel made it harder to stay still. 

So they’d gone to the park. 

There hadn’t been anyone else there, so Dean had let Sam prod him into going down the slide. Then he’d gotten Sam on the merry-go-round and spun him, fast as he could, until he’d cried uncle. He’d fallen off, bashing his arm against one of the rails when he’d dizzily tumbled back into it, which would probably bruise, so they’d moved to the swings.

Sam had actually swung for awhile, but Dean had watched the stars—watched the shadows.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Do you think their dad really killed them?” Sam watched his feet instead of Dean, busy sliding them through the dirt, drawing things Dean only half-recognized before he dragged his feet through them, erasing them. Protection sigils, maybe. 

“No.”

Sam looked up at him, his face a pale oval in the dark, solemn and young, more like the little brother who’d badgered him until Dean told him monsters were real. “What do you think happened to them?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t like it, though, couldn’t help but feel like Sam had been asking a different question entirely, couldn’t help but hear a younger version of his brother underneath, looking to him and asking, _What if the monsters get us, Dean?_

Not knowing wasn’t an option. He wasn’t letting the monsters get Sam.

*

Finding better information, though— 

He didn’t have access to any of Dillon’s friends, not unless he hung out at the junior high and stalked the kids, and Sam had already vetoed that plan. But some of his classmates had younger siblings at the other school. He collected names, a whole slew of questions and theories, but any actual information. No one knew anything. 

He stabbed at the mystery meat masquerading as meatloaf on his tray, mixed it together and tried to figure out his next step. 

“Nicole,” one of the girls at his table called as an attractive brunette sat down at the end with the other cheerleaders. “Maybe she can help. Isn’t your dad the lead detective?”

“Lead detective of what?” Nicole asked, with the wariness of someone who thought they already knew the answer and didn’t want to talk about it. Dean smirked.

“The Thomas case. He is, isn’t he?”

“I guess.” She squished her meatloaf with her fork. Probably wished it was the girl she was talking to. Dean watched through his lashes, trying to remember who the news had said was leading the investigation. Wayne-something?

“Does he know anything yet?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole said, flat. “He doesn’t really talk to me. He definitely doesn’t talk to me about his job.”

“What about your mom?” one of the other girls chimed in. “Doesn’t he talk to her?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole repeated, audibly annoyed. “And I don’t care.”

“But aren’t you curious?” the first girl asked. Dean thought she might’ve had a death wish. And Sam thought he couldn’t read social cues. Nicole probably would have taken the girl’s head off if she’d had a machete. The withering look she turned on the first girl wasn’t anywhere near as effective as the machete would’ve been, but it got her point across—one of the other cheerleaders changed the subject to what they were going to wear for some upcoming Halloween party. 

Which wasn’t a bad subject change, if Dean did say so himself. Which was also when he accidentally caught Nicole’s eye. 

He tried a smile.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, standing, and took her lunch tray. The rest of the group followed suit. The weedy guy and his friend who sat down in their place were much less welcome.

“I bet they were part of a cult,” the weedy guy said. “They tried to get out and—” He drew his thumb across his neck. 

“That doesn’t explain how the cops didn’t see anything,” his friend argued. “There’s no way they could have missed that many people going into the Thomas’ house.”

“Who said there were that many people. Or! Or! Maybe they were all in on it.”

The friend dropped his chin and raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You think Mr. Wainsbee is part of a cult.”

“Hey!” the guy defended, coming half out of his seat in his excitement. “The cops are kind of like a cult. You know. They have the Blue Curtain, or whatever. He could belong to another one, too.”

“You’re retarded.”

“I’m just saying—”

Dean didn’t stick around to see what he was saying. 

*

The gossip got a lot harder to bear when everyone remembered Dean was new in town—and not because they thought Dean had done it, though he was sure they’d work their way around to that, too, but because they started pointing fingers at his dad: _Hey, isn’t Winchester new in town? The murders started about the time he showed up, didn’t they? Has anyone seen his dad? Only once. He stared at me like I was dinner._

He ditched his last class to be able to meet Sam at his school and had to duck the cops when he got there until the school actually let out so he didn’t get picked up from truancy. 

Most of the kids that spilled out of the building didn’t pay Dean any mind, but a few saw him and started whispering with their friends. He caught snatches of _Winchester_ and _Dillon_ and _payback_ , and put two and two together for a surprise. Turned out, Dillon’s classmates were bigger shitheads that his. Who knew?

So he wasn’t surprised when Sam emerged wearing an expression like a thundercloud had shit on his face. But he knew how to deal with it. 

*

“They’re saying I had something to do with Dillon’s disappearance, Dean,” Sam said, the end train of a long, rambling diatribe that had started the moment they stepped foot in the apartment and had encompassed every moment since Sam woke. “I hired a hit man, or I lured him out of the house and chopped him into little pieces, or I drowned him or buried in the meadow, or I—I don’t know—turned him into a frog or something.” 

He flung his hands up in exasperation, and when he dropped them—when he exhaled, deep and long—they took all his energy and anger with them. Frankly, Dean preferred the anger. He could help Sam work off the anger. The sorrow, though. . . .

The frown Sam turned on Dean, standing still in the living room, wasn’t sad, though—or wasn’t just sad, it was also scared. “Dean, Mrs. Carlysle saw my bruise.”

Not what he’d been expecting. He’d been expecting something more along the lines of _Dean, why do my classmates think I’m weird_. He hadn’t been prepared for this fly-ball from left field. Dean blinked. “So?”

“So she didn’t believe me when I said I got it on the merry-go-round playing with my brother. She wanted to know who hurt me. She told me I could tell her if I was in trouble.”

A spiel, unfortunately, they were way too familiar with, from well-meaning teachers and interfering neighbors alike. Which probably meant she’d send a report to Child Protective Services. Which meant a visit from CPS. Which would probably be a problem, even without any stupid rumors spread by pubescent children. 

He scrubbed a hand through Sam’s hair. “Yeah, ok,” he said. “We’ll deal with it.”

To Sam’s skeptical look, he added, “I promise. No one’s taking us away from Dad. We’ll be fine.”

*

Then the third kid disappeared. 

Brittany Swann was thirteen. Before she disappeared, she’d been at a slumber party with seven of her friends. Officially, none of them saw anything and the police were still tracking down leads. Their names weren’t released on the news or in the morning paper.

*

“You know who any of these other girls are?” he’d asked Sam on the way to school. “We need to talk to them.”

“We don’t even know if this is one of ours, Dean.” Sam had his hands shoved deep in his pockets, his shoulders up around his ears. He didn’t look up until Dean nudged him hard enough to knock him a step sideways. 

“What if it is?” he said. 

Sam grimaced. He nodded. 

Dean really kind of wished this was something he could do for Sam, because asking a bunch of kids about other missing kids, when you were their prime suspect, wasn’t going to be anyone’s definition of fun. 

*

Sam was doing his best to turn invisible by the time he slunk out of the school building. Dean didn’t know if it was that, or if the kids had lost interest, but most of them left him alone, walking past like he wasn’t there.

Dean slung an arm around his brother’s shoulders when he got close enough, earning himself a rather sickly, if grateful, smile. Then he looked at a gaggle of girls standing by the planters by the bike racks. There were eight of them, a mix of blondes and brunettes. They stood close together, like a pack. 

One of them looked up at Sam. She stared, her eyes scared, then dropped her head and tucked her hair behind her ears. She nodded. A moment later, she excused herself from the group, started heading for the park. One of the other girls hurried after her, linked their arms together. She whispered something to the first girl, their heads tipped close together. 

“That’s them,” Sam murmured. He started walking, pulling Dean into motion. 

They kept their distance. Sam set the pace, and Dean didn’t fight him. 

The park was crowded when they got there, boasting almost as many parents as children—like being out in public with their kids was going to stop the kids from being snatched from their homes. It didn’t take long to find the girls, though. They were two points of stillness in an otherwise bustling landscape, waiting for them under the spider web jungle gym. 

Sam flinched. Dean wondered if he’d had the same thought Dean had: _Come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly._ Even if they weren’t the spider. 

“Did they tell you anything?”

Sam tipped his head. “They saw something that night. Something that hasn’t made it into the news.”

“Something from our side of the fence?”

Sam shrugged.

When they reached the spider web, they climbed up the other side, worked their way down slowly. Hoping, probably futilely, that anyone who saw them wouldn’t make anything of a pair of girls talking to the Winchesters. 

Dean settled with his back against one of the posts, angled to be able to see the park. Sam sat cross-legged right in front of them. 

“Hey,” he said, bracing his elbows on his knees with a warm smile. “Thank you for talking to us. I know it’s hard, after what happened, but we want to help. You know that, right?”

The girl on the left—he thought Sam had said her name was Sarah, earlier—glanced at him. She’d been the one to hurry after her friend, and he gave her a reassuring smile of his own. “This is crazy,” she said. “How could you possibly help?”

“Maybe we can’t,” Sam said. “But we’d like to try. Can you tell us what happened?”

“The cops told us we were crazy.”

“Not in so many words,” the other girl—Alicia, he thought—murmured. 

“Right,” Sarah said. “They said we were just is shock. Traumatized. There was no way what we saw could’ve happened.” She snorted, then drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “Maybe they were right.”

“Sarah,” Alicia breathed in dismay. 

“It’s alright,” Sam said. “We’re not judging you. Just tell us what happened.”

For a moment, Dean didn’t think they would. Then Sarah exchanged a glance with Alicia. “Donna wanted to play a game,” Sarah said. 

“She wanted to scare us,” Alicia added, still whisper soft. 

“She likes to scare us. I mean, not just us, but—you know, everyone. It makes her feel better or something. I don’t know. But Jess and Tiffany go along with her. It’s harder to say no to her when they help. Anyway, that night, she wanted to play.”

“She said naughty girls couldn’t sleep over. That if we wanted to spend the night, we had to go into the bathroom and say—s-s-say—” Alicia swallowed hard, then she shook her head quickly, almost reflexively. “—three times. And he’d take the naughty ones away.”

“Who would?” Sam asked.

She shook her head again. Tears filled her eyes. “I can’t say it,” she said miserably. “What if he comes for me?” The tears spilled over and Sarah scooted into her side, pulled her into her arms. 

“So Brittany went into the bathroom?” Dean prompted. 

Sarah nodded. “But Brittany wasn’t even supposed to be there. It was a school night. Her mom had told her no. But Brittany told her we were working on a school project, that Mr. Finster would fail her if she didn’t help and everyone was going to be there working on it. She was afraid that if Donna made her go home, her mom would find out she’d lied. So she went.”

Alicia whimpered, burying her face against Sarah’s shoulder, and Sarah held her in place. “Donna made Alicia go in with her—for proof, she said. She turned off the bathroom lights and locked them in. We all crowded close and listened to her say it. Three times, just like she was supposed to. Then they screamed.”

“We saw a skeleton in the mirror,” Alicia mumbled. “But when Brittney turned on the light, it was gone.”

“When Donna let them out of the bathroom, Brittney started yelling at her. She hit her. Donna hit back. Then we heard something in the basement. Like a—a thump. Donna doesn’t have a dog, or a cat. And we could still hear the TV playing in Donna’s parent’s bedroom. There shouldn’t’ve been anything to thump in the basement.”

“It was horrible.”

Sarah nodded.

Dean exchanged a glance with Sam. “She wasn’t attacked in the bathroom?” Both girls shook their heads. “What was horrible?” his little brother prodded. 

“The monster,” Sarah breathed. “We didn’t see it until Brittney got down the stairs. She turned around when she reached the bottom, looked up at us, but—I don’t know. She looked at something under the stairs, and then she screamed. She screamed so loud.”

“It grabbed her,” Alicia said. “It grabbed her, and then it ran. It grabbed her and she was gone.”

“Gone where?” Sam asked. 

Alicia started crying. Sarah turned into her and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Alicia hooked her arms under her shoulders, and her sleeves pulled back, baring a patch of red, raw-looking skin on her wrist. 

“Sam,” he murmured. 

Sam glanced at him, then followed Dean’s gaze. He leaned forward, fingers gently brushing Alicia’s shoulder as he said, “Alicia, did it touch you? Did the monster touch you?”

She nodded without pulling away from Sarah.

Sam sat back unhappily. Sarah watched them with wide, scared eyes. “Is she next?” she demanded. 

“We don’t know,” Dean answered. “But we’re going to stop it. To do that, we need to know what it is. What did Brittney say in the bathroom?”

Alicia wasn’t looking at them. She had her face buried in Sarah’s neck and had started shuddering. But Sarah was, and she held his gaze firmly. Her bottom lip trembled. 

“Sarah. We need to know if we’re going to protect you.”

She swallowed hard, then the tears she’d been holding at bay flooded her eyes and she nodded quickly. “I know,” she said, her lips moving but no sound coming out. “I know.” She wiped her eyes and pushed Alicia back. What she said, Dean couldn’t hear, but Alicia let her go, one hand clamped over her mouth while she watched Sarah go through her backpack. 

She pulled out paper and a pen, scribbled quickly, and passed the folded page over. Then she stood, and neither Winchester tried to stop her when she pulled Alicia to her feet. “Thank you,” Sam murmured before they could leave the jungle gym, but Dean wasn’t sure they heard him, wasn’t sure they cared. 

The only thing that would make a difference to them now was knowing they were safe. 

He unfolded the paper, and Sam crowded close to look over his shoulder. “Bloody Bones?” Sam read. They exchanged a glance, but Dean didn’t need to ask if his brother had ever heard of it. He folded the note, and Sam took the cue to climb to his feet. 

“Guess we’re going to the library,” Dean said. Joy. 

Sam’s lips quirked into a little smile. “You could always call Dad, instead. He’d probably know.”

Probably. 

But they still went to the library. There were some things you just did not interrupt John on a hunt to ask, and research questions they should be able to answer on their own were on that list. He slugged Sam on the shoulder. 

The little bitch just laughed. 

“You have to go to the library, too,” he grumbled. 

Sam grinned as he slung his backpack across his shoulders. “Yeah. But I _like_ the library.”

“Freak.”

*

Sam sweet-talked the little old librarian—who wasn’t actually all old, probably only about Dad’s age, really, and wasn’t actually all that little, either, though she was a she—into helping them pull all the material the library had on what she called Rawhead and Bloody Bones.

“It’s a little scary, boys,” she said, studying them closely before handing the books over. “Are you sure you should be reading this?”

“We kind of collect ghost stories,” Dean said, trying a bashful smile. “Dad got us started on it when his job started taking us all over the place. Sort of—sort of a way of tracking where we’ve been.”

“We’ve found some really cool stories,” Sam added, earnest and excited, and—predictably—she melted. 

“All right. But don’t send your dad my way if you get nightmares. You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The stories varied. Some said rawhead lived in lakes; some said it lived under the stairs or in cupboards. Some said its head was a bloody skull; some said it was a boar’s head. All agreed that it went after children who’d misbehaved. 

What it didn’t say? How to kill it. 

They scoured ever line of text, every reference, and not a single one mentioned how to kill it. Dean tossed the last book away, viciously satisfied when it hit the table with a sharp crack and made Sam jump. “This is stupid. We’re wasting time.”

Sam scowled. “What do you want to do, then, Dean? We can’t exactly go after it until we know how to kill it.”

“It’s a ghost, right? Or a boogeyman. Hell, maybe it’s really a boar. We’ll take rock salt and iron. One of ‘em should take care of it.”

Sam stared at him flatly, unimpressed with his logic. Honestly, Dean knew it wasn’t that simple, too, but they weren’t getting anywhere. “And if it doesn’t?” Sam demanded. 

He forced a careless shrug. “We turn tail. Regroup. Come back later.”

“Come back where, Dean?” Sam pounced, sounding like he’d been waiting for it. But that, Dean had an answer for. He pulled over the paper from the night Corey Thomas had gone missing, pointing at a story that had gone unremarked in the furor of a second missing kid. 

“According to this, Josiah Goldbloom saw a monster run through his field the night Corey went missing. The cops didn’t think much of it ‘cause he was drunk, and they were pretty sure the father did it, but what do you want to bet he saw the rawhead?”

Sam pulled the paper closer, read silently, then pushed it away with a grimace. “He could’ve just seen a wild animal, Dean. He said he saw it run into the corn field. He could’ve just seen the wind blowing the stalks.”

“But what if he didn’t?”

His little brother stared at him. Dean just stared back, willing Sam to fold, because checking out possibilities was what they did. 

Sam sighed. “What’s past the Goldbloom place? The rawhead’s not just going to take them out into the woods.”

“No woods,” Dean answered, pulling out a map he’d found while Sam was smoozing the librarian. “Or, well, maybe. But what I’m thinking is that it headed out here.” He tapped the map. “The old Melville place.”

Sam looked up at him without lifting his head. “Melville?”

“I didn’t name him, dude. But rumor has it he hasn’t left his house in thirty years—never goes out, never lets anyone in. Not since his wife died. You wanna bet he hasn’t been too fussed with cleaning?”

Staring at the page, Sam quietly recited in a flat, creepy kind of singsong:

_“Rawhead and Bloody Bones/  
Steals Naughty Children from their Homes/  
Takes them to his dirty den/  
And they are never seen again.”_

He frowned. “Yeah. Alright.”

“Alright.”

They closed up the books and stacked them. And, since Sammy was a goody-goody, carried them up to the circulation desk before heading out. Naturally, that was when the librarian stopped them. 

“You boys walking home?” she asked. Her face, when they twisted around to face her, was pale. “You shouldn’t walk home alone,” she continued. 

Dean opened his mouth to lie, and Sam said, “Are you alright, Mrs. Peterson? Did something happen?”

It took a minute, but she pulled a pretty horrible smile onto her face. “No. Nothing’s happened. Don’t be silly. I just don’t think you boys should walk home alone.”

She also didn’t seem to know what to do with herself. 

“Did another kid go missing?” Dean asked, meeting her gaze steadily when she glanced at him, her expression saying everything she hadn’t put into words. “Who?”

Her expression broke. She swallowed hard. “Jessica Wainsbee.”

“Donna’s friend,” Sam murmured.

Dean nodded. 

“Let me just get my keys,” Mrs. Peterson announced abruptly, steady where she hadn’t been before. She nodded decisively and stalked back into her office. Dean waited, mostly because he had a nasty suspicion she’d call the cops if they just disappeared. The last thing he and Sam needed were cops on their tail, particularly when they were soon going to be packing heat. 

The drive to their apartment was quiet, not even broken by directions, because once they told her what apartment, she knew where she was going. She just as obviously didn’t like it. Thank God, she didn’t feel like it was her place to say anything. He got enough complaints about their living situation from Sam. 

Sam, naturally, smiled sweetly at her when she pulled up at their apartment. “Thank you for the ride, Mrs. Peterson.”

“Oh, you’re welcome, sweetie. Maybe I should—” _Come up. Wait until you get inside._ Dean didn’t know which she was going to finish with, but Sam didn’t let her try. Just smiled and said:

“No, we’ll be alright.” He closed the door before she could try again. 

Dean barely noticed. The pair climbing out of a dark sedan parked in the corner on the far side of the lot had caught his attention: one man, one woman, cheap suits, friendly smiles, no guns. The woman carried a briefcase. They moved quickly.

He caught Sam’s arm. “Let’s go, Sammy.”

“Dean and Sam Winchester!” the woman called before they could get more than a couple steps. Dean didn’t stop walking, and neither did Sam, but they turned to look. 

“Who’re you?” Dean demanded, even though he knew. CPS. Damn, stupid, meddling teachers. 

“My name in Cindy Trotman. This is my partner, Robbie Davenport. We’re from Child Protective Services. We need to talk to you.”

“Can’t. Sorry. It’s late. School tomorrow. You understand.”

“I’m afraid it’s important. We really can’t wait.”

He smiled, even as he pushed Sam toward the door, passed him his keys. “I’m afraid you’re really going to have to. We know our rights. We don’t want to talk to you without our dad.”

Her expression turned sour, pinched, and her gaze slipped behind him. “Sam?” she prompted gently, like she could put on sheep’s clothing and hide the fact that she’d already shown herself as a wolf. 

“I don’t want to talk to you, either. Go bother Dad.”

The lock gave, and Dean piled in right on Sam’s heels, slamming the door closed before Cindy Trotman could get the bright idea to force the door. They weren’t supposed to be able to do that, but if she did it would be her word against his and Sam’s, and he wasn’t loving their chances of that going in their favor—particularly if Trotman managed to convince a judge of exigent circumstances. And if Dad was incommunicado on a hunt, they just might.

Sam was white-faced and tense beside him, his eyes wide, black holes in the dark. “What’re we going to do, now, Dean?”

*

He got the weapons duffel packed and hustled Sam out Dad’s bedroom window and across the green to the next apartment complex—because the hunt came first; because it got them out from under the watchful eye of the dreadful duo; because doing nothing but waiting for the cops to bust down their door was going to drive him insane. 

Because Sam steadied, too, when they were hunting. 

Dean boosted a car from the apartment parking lot because the Melville place was fifteen miles away across town. Even if they could make the trek before dawn, any cops that caught sight of them were going to have something to say about a pair of teenagers out after midnight with a duffel full of weapons, whether or not they realized the bag was full of weapons. 

By the time he’d gotten the car stuck in loose dirt two tenths of a mile from the house, Dean wished he’d chosen a pick-up instead of the Datsun. 

Whatever. 

“You ready?” he asked. 

*

They went in the front.

The house was large, gray—whether that was a deliberate choice or neglect, Dean couldn’t say in the dark—with two windows peeking out of the roof. Dean wasn’t entirely sure the porch would hold, the way it creaked under the weight, and if a girl’s life hadn’t maybe been hanging in the balance, bitch or no, he might’ve rethought going in there at night.

As it was, Dean went in with the Glock loaded with iron. Sam had the shotgun, rock salt rounds loaded, and a backup pistol tucked into his waistband ‘cause Dean was banking on this thing being corporeal. 

Sam tried the door, twisting the handle carefully. He glanced at Dean—open—then shifted to the side, gave the door a push, and let Dean go in first as the door swung open. It was dark on the other side, darker than the night, and Dean clicked on his tac-light. He paused just inside the door, flicked the light switch up and down. Nothing. 

Behind him, Sam’s torch clicked on. 

He trailed Dean through the house, Dean tracking his progress out of the corner of his eye, by the flick of his torch, the soft sound of his step. The house creaked and groaned around them. The air was thick, musty, a pervasive scent of rot lingering under everything. Trash had collected around the furniture, blown up against it and the walls like snow drifts, ankle deep in some places. 

He kinda hoped Melville’s missus had never been able to look down and see what he’d become after she died. The old sixties furniture looked worn-out and sad-looking, even when it looked brand new. 

There was no movement aside from them—not in the front, not in the living room, dining room, or kitchen, not upstairs in the slant-roofed attic bedroom, not in the master bed or bath. It didn’t bode well for them finding Jessica alive, the silence, but they couldn’t give up until they were sure. Until the monster was dead. 

They found two more empty rooms before Sam pushed open a door that gaped into darkness with stairs that dropped away into it. The door hit the wall. Maybe it was his imagination, but it felt like the house held its breath around them. 

He exchanged a glance with Sam, could just make out the shape of his brother’s face in the referred light from his torch, the liquid gleam of his eyes, and read the same knowledge there that had settled in Dean: if the rawhead was here, they would find it down there. 

Dean readjusted his grip on the Glock. Sam moved up to the door to cover him. 

The stairs creaked under his weight, impossibly loud, hollow. No way anything down there didn’t know he was coming. His nerves jangled, expecting any moment for a hand to reach through the cracks, grab his ankle. 

He moved more quickly despite himself, despite Dad’s voice in his ear, telling him, _Steady, Dean, steady_ , low and familiar. 

To his right, the wall extended all the way to the floor, to his left it ended after about six feet, nothing but railing a little above waist-height between him and the darkness. He swiveled to cover it, his tac light catching the edge of a shelf here, the gleam of chrome there, odds and ends and more trash, but getting swallowed up in between. 

Nothing moved, no matter how hard he strained his eyes to see through the darkness or how close he listened past the rush of blood in his ears. There was just space and nothing. 

He put his back to the corner, swept the stairs to settle his nerves, not exactly reassured when there was nothing under them. Maybe he’d been wrong, thinking this was the place; maybe a girl was dead now because he’d been wrong. He clenched his jaw. 

“Go,” he said, knew even soft his voice would carry to his brother.

He didn’t expect the flurry of footsteps, too heavy to be Sam; didn’t expect the shadow that rose up behind the kid, caught only in the periphery of his vision; didn’t expect the sudden movement when something closed with Sam and Sam whirled. Then Sam tumbled down the steps.


	2. Chapter 2

“Sam!” he yelled, even as he set, aimed, fired, the report drowning out the thump of Sam’s body, the clatter of his torch falling through the steps, the rattle of the shotgun tumbling past Dean’s legs in sharp bursts. 

The shadow melted away. Hunting instinct said find it—but Sam was still falling. He got between Sam and the floor. Sam’s weight crashed into his legs, sudden and only half-expected. He tumbled back, ass hitting poured concrete hard. He clutched onto Sam, kept him wrapped up, even when his head snapped back, even when his breath whooshed out of his lungs.

Dazed, he floated in the stillness—his stillness, the room’s, Sam’s—and struggled to reboot. To turn the crank, get the cylinder’s firing. He blinked hard, coughed his lungs back into functioning. Caught at Sam’s jacket. 

“Sam!” he croaked, dragged his fingers higher, patting at his face when the kid didn’t answer. “Sammy!”

He pushed up, trying to get Sam up, get out from under him, get a look at him—he wasn’t moving, Dean needed to get a look at him—when the shadows darkened at the top of the stairs. It moved closer, gaze fixed steadily, pointedly on Dean when it pulled the door closed.

“Sam!” He caught Sam’s shoulder in one hand, groped across the floor looking for the Glock he’d dropped with the other. “Sam, wake up!” He shook him, heart in throat with fear—that he wouldn’t find the gun, that Sam wouldn’t wake up, that he’d paralyze his brother trying to save his life. 

His hand closed around the shotgun’s barrel. He dragged it closer, jostled Sam getting it into his hand, heard his brother groan—

—felt the rawhead standing over them, the air too close—

He lifted, fired. Felt something warm spray over his face. 

The rawhead recoiled, hissing, turned and disappeared deeper into the basement, moving quick and easy. Not dispersed; not a spirit. Not hurt by the iron, not really. Not unless he’d missed.

“Sam,” he murmured low, as close to his brother’s ear as he could manage and still keep an eye on the shadows, feeling Sam stir sluggishly against him. “Sam, I need you to get up.”

“D’n?”

“Here, Sammy.” He palmed Sam’s head, fingers curling across his forehead, just catching the butterfly-soft flicker of his eyelashes. “But I need you to get up, Sammy. Can you do that? You with me?”

In answer, Sam tried to get his hands down, his feet under him. Dean tipped him upright, caught his shoulder before he could faceplant, hooked an arm around his brother’s waist to keep him from wobbling away as they pushed to their feet. Sam wavered at the top. “Ok, Sammy?”

Sam breathed hard, digging his palm into his forehead, but he nodded. Dean just caught the edges of the motion in the dark.

“Sam?”

“Here,” Sam murmured. 

It would have to be good enough. “Ok.” He shuffled Sam back to prop up the wall. “Wait here a moment. Then we’re gone. Here.” 

He fished the piece out of Sam’s waistband, got his fingers wrapped around the grip. He hovered a moment, but Sam didn’t start sliding toward the floor. He found his flashlight, then Sam’s, shoved it in his pocket and retrieved the Glock. 

He could hear the rawhead again by then, coming closer, and he quickly hooked Sam’s arm over his shoulder. He tucked the Glock into his pants, kept the shotgun in his hand. He got them moving.

Sam’s feet tripped up the steps. He pressed the hand not over Dean’s shoulders into the wall, and kept going, but he was too slow—they were too slow. Dean could feel it. 

He brought the shotgun up when the monster was too close, fired. Heard it stumble back, growl, but not move away. 

He cursed, fumbling for more ammo, for his Glock. 

Sam’s arm slipped off his shoulders. 

He stuttered, his brain firing two separate signals—catch Sam, shoot the monster. It wasted precious time. Time they didn’t have. 

He jumped when Sam’s pistol went off in his ear. The muzzle flash blinded him, close and unexpected, and he reared back. Better yet, so did the rawhead. He heard it crash into something further in the room, roaring in pain and anger. 

Dean pulled Sam back against him, dragged his brother up the stairs. They hit the top with Sam stumbling to his knees, and he hauled Sam back up, got him moving as fast as he dared down the hall, through the living room, up the foyer. He stumbled and fell under Sam’s weight when they jumped the porch stairs, didn’t let Sam stop. 

The rawhead would come after them again. It’d come after them and it’d be pissed, and they needed to be somewhere else. They needed another plan. 

“Where’re we going?” Sam gasped. He seemed steadier on his feet, so Dean pulled him along faster. He bypassed the car. 

“Goldbloom’s.”

He heard the rawhead hit the porch and dropped the useless shotgun, reclaimed the Glock. Sam was running steadier now, panting hard, and Dean nudged him to go faster, opening up some distance between them to make it easier. But he kept his hand fisted in Sam’s jacket, used it to drag him on when his brother flagged. 

“We’re not—gonna make it.”

“We’re gonna make it.” They didn’t have a choice.

The rawhead howled, a loud, low growl that raised the hair on the back of his neck. Then it charged. 

Dean didn’t dare look back. He put one foot in front of the other, fast as he could, kept Sam on the pace. The little part of him that could be spared to think about anything hoped Goldbloom wouldn’t shoot them when they charged onto his property. 

Dean’s lungs burned.

Sam’s breath hitched on every gasp, rasping in his throat. 

They hit the cornfield and kept going, plunging into the tall stalks, ignoring the big leaves that smacked at their face, the uneven ground that threatened their ankles. 

Dean couldn’t hear anything past the rustle of the large leaves. Every second, he expected to find the rawhead behind him—expected a hand to grab him, sharp teeth to rip out his throat—expected Sam to be snatched from his hands, disappeared screaming into the corn. 

He was shaking by the time they emerged on the other side, the house before them, Mr. Goldbloom frowning at them over the rifle snugged to his shoulder. 

“Stop right there!” he yelled. 

They didn’t.

“Help!” Dean gasped. “Monster! Behind us! Help!”

Hesitation slackened the man’s aim, his grip. 

Dean hauled Sam up with two hands on his jacket when his legs tried to fold under him, heard it when the rawhead plunged into the cornfield, and saw Goldbloom’s head come up. The rife drifted higher, over his head. 

They reached the back porch. Dean pushed Sam ahead of him up the stairs. “We have to get inside.” Not that that would help. Every victim had been grabbed from inside. “Do you have a phone?”

“Yeah, through—”

Sam kept going on his own steam once they got inside, making a beeline for the phone like he’d known where it was. “Call Dad,” he ordered. 

“Now, wait just a damn minute,” Goldbloom snapped, right on Dean’s heels. “Who the hell do you think you are, barging in here like this. I oughta—”

It was a small house, front door opening straight to the living room, the space filled by a sectional couch and TV, the kitchen partitioned off by a low wall. A short hall bypassed the kitchen, ending in the master bedroom. Stairs branched off at a perpendicular heading up and down—closed, or closed enough there was no entrance to the living room from underneath them. 

“Close and lock all the doors, windows.” 

Goldbloom sputtered, stalled in the middle of the floor. He looked from Dean to Sam, then did as he’d been told. Dean started prying at windows, even knowing it wouldn’t help. He didn’t know what would.

“Dad’s not answering,” Sam called, head still bent over the phone, already redialing.

“Try Bobby.” Angry as the other hunter was at Dad, at Dean, too, even, he was pretty sure he’d answer. He finished the living room, circled in time to see Goldbloom coming out of the bedroom. “Upstairs?”

He shook his head. “Never opened ‘em.”

Probably wouldn’t matter, anyway. The weak spot was the basement, and Dean didn’t know how to shore it up. “Sammy?”

His little brother lifted a hand, ducking his head like that could give him privacy, murmured low and fast into the phone. Dean caught, “Bobby” and “kill” and “rawhead,” which were the important parts. 

His restless prowling took him back to the front windows in time to see the rawhead burst from the corn. It moved fast, the clothes it wore looking awkward and bulky on its humanoid frame. Between one breath and the next, it cleared the ground to the bottom of the porch. 

“Faster, Sam!” he called, and caught Goldbloom moving from the corner of his eye, rifle in hand. 

He was too close to the door for Dean to stop him, but he tried. He lunged after him even as Goldbloom yanked the door open, muttering about getting “that bastard off my damn property.” The older man stepped out the door and aimed, hitting high left on the rawhead’s torso. It barely stuttered, bounded up the steps. 

Goldbloom stumbled back, nerveless fingers dropping the gun. 

Dean stepped up, no way to get Goldbloom inside and the door closed before the monster was on them. He raised the pistol, fired point-blank at the thing’s face. The shot snapped the thing’s head back, ripped away part of its face. 

It had been ugly to start with—face lumpy, the skin too loose, extra flesh on either side of its too flat, too wide snout, sharp teeth and wild hair. Now, it leered at them with the flesh missing from the left side of its jaw, white teeth and bone visible up to its eye. Revulsion shuddered up Dean’s spine.

Next to him, Goldbloom choked. 

Dean didn’t think. He stepped forward, put his body weight into the boot he landed on the rawhead’s chest. 

It flew backwards, tumbling off the porch. 

He hauled Goldbloom inside, kicked the rifle out of the way, slammed the door and locked it. “Sam!” he bellowed as he whirled. 

“Electricity,” his little brother answered, closer than he’d expected, momentarily rocking Dean back on his heels, phone clenched in his hand like a weapon—or a shield. “Bobby says we have to fry it.”

“Great.” It wasn’t, exactly, but the house had electricity. They could pull the wiring out of the walls, fray it. Maybe they could get the monster to step in a bucket of water. 

He took the stairs to the basement at a jog, the Glock in his hand almost an afterthought, Sam on his heels. They were steep and narrow, Dean’s shoulders almost brushing the wall on either side, until both sides opened up about six feet from the bottom. 

The room itself was only slightly bigger than the living room, and only the first six or eight feet, measuring from the wall behind the stairs, was paved—enough to fit the washer and dryer side-by-side along the left wall, but not much else. The rest was dirt—

With a generator on the perimeter near the back wall, and a water-filled depression in the middle. 

He exchanged a glance with Sam, who grinned. He nudged Sam’s belly with the back of his hand. “Hey, go see—”

“You can’t be down here,” Goldbloom interrupted, abruptly looming at the top of the stairs. “It’s not safe.”

Sam’s face folded in concern, probably for how Goldbloom was feeling right now. But Dean knew better than Goldbloom how safe the basement wasn’t, so he just turned his question to the building’s owner. “You got any spare wire?”

“What?”

“Man, we don’t have time for this! That thing’s going to barge in here any second and rip all our throats out. Do you have wire?”

His mouth opened and closed. “Ye—”

“Get it!”

Goldbloom skedaddled. 

“Alright. See if you can find a wrench. We need get rid of the ground on the generator.” They got moving, Sam veering off to the cabinets and the tool bench built into the right wall, Dean to the generator—after checking out the shadows under the stairs. “Did Bobby say how much juice this thing needs?”

Sam shook his head. “He just said we’d need to fry it good.”

Dean was taking that as the more juice the better, so they definitely needed to lose the ground. It only took a couple seconds to find the right connection, then he pivoted on his toes in a crouch, looking to see if there was anything else they could do. Maybe grab power from the grid, pull the wires out of one of the outlets. There was one over by the tool bench, but that was probably too far.

Behind him, though. That would do. If Sam ever got him the tools.

“Sam—” 

With a clatter, Sam hauled the toolbox off the bench, clumsy and awkward because he had to reach above his head to grab it. It swung wildly, almost pulling him off his feet before he compensated for its weight, only to grimace when it rebounded back against his shins.

Dean swallowed his grin and clapped sharply. “Double-time, Sammy. Come on. Hurry up.”

“You’re not Dad,” his little brother groused, even as he got the toolbox hefted more comfortably and shuffled into something approximately a jog that skirted the pool of water. 

“Less whining, more hopping.”

That earned him a bitchy look, all the more satisfying because his little brother couldn’t take a swipe at him without dropping the toolbox on his toes. He smiled sweetly in response. And automatically checked the shadows under the stairs. Still clear, miraculously. Maybe it was clocking Goldbloom upstairs?

Sam huffed and rolled his eyes, and Dean stood to help him with the toolbox. He didn’t quite get a hand on it before Sam dumped it at his feet with thump. “Now what?”

“Now—” Dean scrubbed a hand through Sam’s hair before he could twitch out of reach. “—you go see what’s keeping old Goldbloom.”

Sam nodded pensively, but spun obediently and charged for the stairs. 

Dean tracked him by ear, hearing it when he moved from dirt to concrete, concrete to wooden stairs, even as he dug through the toolbox, trying to match wrench to bolt, and finally succeeding on the third try. 

His skin was itching before he’d gotten the bolt undone, twitchy with the silence and the thick stillness that had settled over the basement once Sam had reached the landing. It felt a little like the air before a lightning strike—if it’d been closed up in a box and left to molder for a hundred years. He strained his ears for a hint of Sam moving around upstairs and couldn’t find it. 

He pulled the bolt out as quickly as he could and freed the wire, pulling it completely clear of the generator as he conducted a visual search for Sam. 

And saw the eyes. 

He couldn’t really see the rawhead’s body hidden in the shadows, not even knowing it was there, layered in dirty clothes and spattered with blood. But he could see the eyes. Like they’d drawn all the light to them.

For a moment, the tableau held, him and the rawhead locked in a stand-off at high noon in the dead of night. Dean had the Glock tucked into his waistband. Or he could maybe use the wire as a garrote. He knew the thing was fast, but maybe he could neutralize some of that advantage if he got it tethered to the eight-foot grounding rod that had been buried in the earth. 

Except none of that was going to kill the thing, not even if he socked the thing in the face and ripped its heart out. If it had a heart.

Decision made, Dean lunged for the generator. He only had seconds, he knew, before the rawhead closed the gap. He got the fuel valve open, even though his fingers tried to fumble it, hooked the choke and pulled it out, flipped the engine control to on. Then he ran out of time. 

The rawhead was feet away, bearing down on him like a freight train. He’d been plowed before, by John in training, his dad saying he needed to know how to take a charge, needed to be prepared for the big hit so he could keep it from knocking him out. He didn’t think that would feel anything like this. But he braced his feet anyway, squared his shoulders, wrapped his fingers around the recoil rope and pulled. 

The rawhead slammed into him, wrapped its arms around his torso and took him off his feet. The recoil rope ripped out of his hand, instantly burning through his fingers and making them feel numb. 

Surprise held him still for a moment, a second, long enough for the rawhead to slam him into the wall. His lungs creaked. He strangled on a groan. 

The monster buried its face in his neck, sucked in a breath. Smelling him. 

Dean’s stomach rolled. “I’m not your dinner, freak,” he bit out with what little breath he had. He punched it in the face. He didn’t have a good angle or any leverage, but the blow landed, awkward and weak. 

The rawhead twitched away from it, shuffling sideways with its face still buried in Dean’s neck. He felt something wet drag up his skin and resolutely did not think about what that was, just took the new space and twisted into it. He peeled his back off the wall, threw his weight into shoving the thing off-balance. 

It barely moved, rocked back maybe half a step, head coming up in irritation. But it was still space Dean could use. 

He immediately pulled back, snatching his right arm free. He threw a cross with his left that rocked the thing’s head back, then threw a right hook that staggered it. It’s feet tangled with the generator, dumping the rawhead on its head in the pool of water. And nudged the generator dangerously close to the same fate. 

Which wasn’t a good thing until they actually got it _on._

He drew a breath—the first it felt like he’d taken in forever—and stumbled to the generator. He fell against it more than anything, his throat burning, and seized the recoil—pulled once, twice, and felt the engine rumble to life, the low growl echoing off the walls and bouncing back until it sounded like he’d been dropped in the middle of the generator. 

It drowned out the rawhead, the sound of the water splashing and sloshing as it moved, and Dean tilted his head to look for it even as his fingers stretched for the choke. And froze just short of it. 

The rawhead wasn’t in the pool. It wasn’t outside the pool. It wasn’t beside Dean, or behind him. It wasn’t hiding under the stairs. It wasn’t in the basement. 

But it hadn’t left the basement. It couldn’t have. 

With nascent panic building in his gut, Dean charged into the pool. His feet sank into the mud, stirred up silt when he dragged them along the bottom, first across, then back at an angle, then in a circle. The cold water closed around his ankles, flooded over the tops of his boots to soak his socks and freeze his toes, climbed his jeans almost up to his knee. But there was nothing else in that water besides him. 

And that meant—

Three shots, close and in quick succession, stopped Dean’s heart and started it racing all at once. It brought his head up, like a dog coming on point. He charged across the floor without thinking about it and took the stairs two at a time. “Sam!” he bellowed, fear lending volume. 

He hit the first floor, looked left, then right, and didn’t see anything. 

Heard faintly: _“Dean!”_

Above him, and Dean shoved back into motion. The stairway was dark, only lit by ambient light from the first floor. The walls seemed to close in around him and he pushed them away, pushed through the fatigue to make the landing. 

The stairs dumped into a short hallway, a door on either side, both open. The one on the right was dark, but there was light coming from the one on the left, soft and diffuse, maybe from a flashlight, so he veered left.

He saw Sam’s legs first. Sam’s foot kicked weakly against the floor. He pulled his Glock as he rounded the doorjamb and came into the room, gripped it two-handed. 

The rawhead leaned over Sam, straddling his hips, its face close to his brother while it smelled him, nostrils flared wide and a look of pleasure of its grotesque face. It kept one hand high on Sam’s chest, keeping him pinned and restricting his breathing, and Sam alternately had his hands wrapped around it, trying to pull it up, or stretched above his head, trying to reach his weapon. The other hand, it raked slowly down Sam’s chest. 

His brother gurgled.

Dean shot it in the head on reflex. 

The rawhead reared up, snarled at him. Dean pulled the trigger again on principle. 

Sam immediately elbowed backward. Dean kept going, the better to distract the rawhead from his brother. He threw a cross when he was close enough, but either the rawhead was learning or Dean was slowing down. It caught his arm before it made contact, grabbed his other arm, hands curled tight enough its claws pierced his skin, and threw him. 

The walls were stacked with boxes. He crashed into them, tumbled to the floor. Caught a glimpse of Goldbloom past a stack of tumbled boxes, against the wall and knocked out cold, blood sluggishly trickling from a cut on his head. Dean flailed a moment in the boxes, trying to right himself before the rawhead came after him or—worse—went back after Sam. 

For a moment, it looked like the rawhead would come for Dean.

Then Sam kicked it. Pulled back both feet and let fly, aiming high—ish, and catching the monster in the sternum. It flew back, crashed into a stack of boxes that skewed and toppled over. 

“Go, Sammy! Go! Basement!” Because that was where they needed to be to kill this fucker. Well, unless they wanted to try to get the thing in the bathtub with a hairdryer, and he’d seen the size of that bathroom. Speaking of—

Sam rolled to his feet and went. Dean followed behind, pausing only to drab a hairdryer that had tumbled out of one of the boxes, just in case, and got a hold of the back of Sam’s shirt just as they reached the stairs. 

He could hear the rawhead behind them. Boxes tumbled, shifted. The rawhead growled. 

“Go, Sammy,” Dean urged again. They thundered down the stairs, sliding down part of them when their feet slipped off the narrow steps. But they stayed upright and moving, paused at the first floor landing. 

The basement was dark. Dean couldn’t hear the rawhead behind them anymore. He couldn’t hear any movement at all. Stretching only his arm into the dark, he found the light switch, flipped it off then back on again.

Nothing. 

Dean fished his tac-light out of his pocket, looked at Sam when he didn’t. “Dropped it,” Sam murmured. They found a flashlight that worked in the kitchen, the light dim even when they shone it in a dark cabinet, but it would work. Dean could still hear the generator rumbling. 

He gave the hairdryer to Sam. “Go straight for the generator,” he instructed. “Turn off the choke. It’s yellow, a loop kinda like the dip stick to check the oil. After you turn that off, push the generator into the water. I’ll take care of Rawhide. If we need more juice—” He tapped the hairdryer.

Sam nodded.

They made it down the stairs without incident. Dean searched the room as they went, hitting the corners, then dragging to the center. He didn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything over the generator, either, not even his or Sam’s footsteps. 

The light was out, though, so the rawhead was here. Under the stairs, probably. He couldn’t check properly until they reached the basement floor, but the important part was that it wouldn’t stand between Sam and the generator. He sent Sam off with a nudge and purposely dragged his eyes away, focused where the light hit as he rounded the stairs, followed the gun sight across the open space.

Nothing.

“Dean!”

He whirled. The rawhead loomed over Sam. It wrapped its arms around him. Dean aimed high, shot—two times, three—couldn’t tell if he hit. It took Sam with it back into the water. “Sammy!”

He couldn’t risk the gun again, couldn’t see well enough to risk another shot, so he dropped it, charged into the water and grabbed the first form he came to. He hauled back. His feet slipped, so did his hands. Large ones grabbed him, threw him. 

He hit the wall, rattled his head. Something large splashed in the water. 

Dean threw himself back in before he’d found his feet. “Sammy!”

No answer. A dark shape loomed out of the water, so he hit it, made sure to put his weight behind the blow and it tumbled back. “Sam!” he yelled again. A head popped up near him, a little hand latched onto his jeans. He hooked his hand under Sam’s shoulder, hauled him up even as he choked on air.

He dragged Sam to the generator, didn’t let go even after the kid got his feet under him. So he felt it when the rawhead grabbed on, heard Sam’s choked cry. He didn’t let go. No way in hell was the rawhead dragging Sam back into that pool. He dug his heels in and pulled back. 

Sam twisted, kicked, made more choked, kicked-puppy sounds Dean wasn’t going to think about because he couldn’t, not and hold on. “Sam!” he ground out, part order, part plea, part apology and _hurry up._

He felt the tension coil through Sam’s body, jolted when Sam suddenly kicked out hard, almost dropping him with the sudden motion. Then did drop him when they abruptly flew backwards. Sam’s weight compressed his lungs. His elbow or head or something knocked Dean in the face. He bit his tongue. 

Then Sam was scrambling up, beside him, his hands pulling at Dean, and that was all something to worry about later. He and Sam were out of the water. He found the generator, gave it a solid kick. 

It slid into the water. 

The room lit up with searing bright arcs of electricity. They climbed the rawhead, limned him. For one endless moment, Dean could see it in front of them, arms out-stretched at its side, almost like Christ on the cross, its face twisted in anger or agony or both, locked in place by the electricity at the edge of the pool.

Then everything went dark. 

Dean blinked against the shadows that crowded close in its wake and pressed against his eyes, against the after-images burned into his retinas. Sam pressed harder against his side, breath loud in the sudden silence. 

The rawhead fell back into the pool, the splash making Sam jump. 

“Do you think it’s really dead?” Sam asked, his voice uneven, shocky, hoarse. 

Dean wasn’t getting in the water to check. It took a few minutes to get to his feet and track down the hairdryer, because he had to find the flashlight first, and that required him to get Sam to let go of him because it had ended up on the opposite side of the room against the wall. But they got it plugged into the main electrical line and dropped it in. 

The probably threw a breaker somewhere, but he could smell burnt hair and ozone, sharp and acrid, and he felt pretty confident saying, “It’s really dead.”

Sam, being Sam, celebrated by leaning over his knees and throwing up.

*

Dean didn’t remember a lot of what happened next. He remembered helping Sam upstairs y the light of his torch, only to discovered they’d flipped the breaker and the power in the whole house was out. He remembered being scared he’d step away from Sam and come back to find him dead. 

He remembered Sam was pale and faintly green in the light from Goldbloom’s living room (and even paler under the fluorescent light at the hospital), small and sick-looking and miserable. He remembered answering questions about Sam, and about the monster, remembered Goldbloom’s face blanching and the cops making sympathetic faces and patting his shoulder, releasing him to go back to his brother, but he didn’t remember what he’d said. He didn’t remember actually getting from Goldbloom’s place to the hospital, to a private room with just him and Sam. 

Maybe he’d hit his head, too. 

“You look like crap.”

The garbled words twisted Dean’s head away from the muted TV to look at his brother. Sam’d curled on his side, knees pulled up and hands tucked under his cheek. If Dean hadn’t been able to see the muddy green of his eyes at intervals, he wouldn’t have known Sam was awake. “So do you,” he told him, even if he definitely looked better for having had pain meds and approximately eight hours horizontal.

“Yeah,” Sam murmured, making the effort to open his eyes properly before they sank shut, “but I busted my head open. What’s your excuse?”

He swallowed thickly, abruptly reliving that moment at the bottom of the stairs, Sam crashing into his legs, boneless and silent and not waking up. He’d had the rawhead to distract him in the moment, but now—He refocused on the TV. 

“Have you gotten any sleep?”

“I’m on watch, Sammy.” Not to mention, when Sam hadn’t woken bitchy and disoriented from lack of sleep, he’d woken agitated, not settling until Dean reassured him he was there and they were fine and safe.

“Mmmm.” The cartoon had time to click over to commercials before Sam roused enough to add, “You should get some sleep, D’n.”

“No point. We’re busting out of here in a couple hours.” The hospital hadn’t had any better luck getting in touch with Dad than the school or CPS has, and Dean hadn’t managed it, either, when he’d slipped away while the docs were imaging Sam’s brain, but he’d talked to Bobby, and Bobby had promised them a ride at three. 

Fifteen-hundred hours couldn’t come soon enough, far as Dean was concerned. That CPS bitch and her partner had already been sniffing around, talking with the doctor and nurses, talking at Dean. Only the fact that the hospital hadn’t released Sam (combined with a recommendation not to separate the brothers so soon after their trauma) had kept them from taking the Winchesters into custody. 

Sam didn’t answer. Another glance showed him out cold, mouth sagging open and face slack. Dean snorted. Not that he blamed the kid. Sleeping in a hospital was always lousy, even when you didn’t have a head injury. There was always somebody coming around, waking you up—

He whipped his head around when someone tapped hesitantly at the doorframe. Not the nurses—they might knock once or twice on their way in, but more often they just breezed in with a quiet, “Good morning, Mr. Winchester. Everything all right?” The one time he’d seen the doctor after they’d come back with the results of Sam’s scan, he’d knocked, but that had been confident, brisk. CPS he would have heard coming a mile away. He wasn’t expecting anyone else. 

Except one person, and that wasn’t really an expectation so much as a hope. 

The girl who smiled hesitantly from the doorway wasn’t any of them. She had long, straight brown hair and a pretty face. She ducked her head after their eyes met and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Hey, uh—Can I come in?”

She was in jeans and a t-shirt that showed off a sliver of her toned stomach, and she looked familiar, but it took Dean a moment to place her. Nicole. Cheerleader and Detective’s daughter. They’d never actually spoken before. 

Suddenly nervous for no good reason—he’d faced down a rawhead, for God’s sake—he shifted so he was sitting up against the pillows. “Yeah. Yeah, sure.”

Her smile flickered brighter and she crossed the room with the easy confidence she moved across through the school with, even if she didn’t quiet look at him again. She stopped about a foot from the edge of the bed, too far away to touch, and tucked her hands into her back pockets. 

“So,” she started. “How are you feeling, Dean?” 

“Good. Good. I’m good.”

“Good,” she agreed. “And your brother?”

“Sam’s—” He looked, because hot girl or not, it still kinda felt like he needed to see Sam to really know he was okay. “He’s sleeping a lot. But they tell me he’s going to be fine.”

She bobbed her head, exhaling like it was the first time she’d done so all day. “Yeah. Yeah, I know how that is.”

“. . . is?” Dean asked, not knowing how to ask what question, and Nicole’s smile turned wide and brilliant.

“Yeah,” she breathed. “That’s why I’m here.”

Dean blinked, nonplussed.

“I wanted to say thank you.”

“Thank you?”

She nodded, even as she ducked her head and pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, rocked back on her heels. “Yeah. You know, word on the street is that you and your brother killed that guy. The one who was taking all the kids.” When she glanced at him, he nodded. “Dad said, if it wasn’t for you and your brother, we wouldn’t have found Jess. Not before—”

She swallowed hard and looked away, cleared her throat. “Anyway. He said you saved her life. And the doctors say she’s going to be fine, now, that she’ll get better. So I just wanted to say thank you. So, you know—” She met his eyes solidly for the first time since she walked into the room. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Dean swallowed, cleared his throat. “I’m glad she’s ok.”

“Me, too.” She smiled, then huffed out a laugh. “So, um. Yeah. I’m just gonna—” She backed away, thumbing over her shoulder toward the door. He watched her go sort of helplessly. It wasn’t like he could ask her to stay, not when they would just be leaving in a little while. There wouldn’t be any point. And he didn’t think she really wanted to start anything so much as she wanted to be useful.

It wasn’t until she reached the door that another idea occurred to him. He jerked upright. 

“Wait! Nicole!” She stopped in the doorway. “You going to be around for awhile?”

*

Sam went pale again as soon as they started to move, but he slapped Dean’s hands away every time he tried to help, so Dean figured he was okay. It helped that he’d been bitching at Dean ever since Nicole dropped off their things. 

(“Do I want to know why you have a bag full of weapons?” she’d asked. 

“Not unless you want to know what’s really out there,” he’d said. Based on her long look, he wasn’t sure if she thought he was joking, already thought she had an idea, or if she didn’t really want to know, but she hadn’t pressed. And her dad hadn’t come for them.)

“She wanted to help,” he told Sam now, not looking at his brother as he shucked the scrubs they’d given him to replace his wet things and pulled on his own jeans, instead.

“That’s not why we do this.”

“It wasn’t about that.”

He caught Sam’s bitchface when he reached for his shirt. “You asked her if she could do us a favor.”

“Yeah.” Sam huffed. Dean rolled his eyes and faced his brother over the hospital bed. “Sam, she wasn’t able to help her sister. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. She could help us.”

“So you decided to take advantage,” Sam charged, though with a little less vitriol than he’d been using. 

“Dude. You of all people should know what it’s like when your family gets hurt and you can’t do anything about it. What would you’ve done in her place?”

Sam pursed his lips and chewed the inside of his cheek without looking at Dean. He didn’t answer, just went back to switching out his hospital gown for his civvies. But he didn’t need to. They finished dressing in silence.

*

The doctor came by one last time before discharging them, checked Sam’s vitals, his reflexes, and whatever else it was that doctor’s checked, gave his brother the green light and Dean a list of symptoms to watch out for.

And the CPS bitch a dirty look when she stepped through the doorway before he’d finished. Dean felt pretty good about that. Until the guy stepped forward and shook her hand, anyway. 

Cindy Trotman smiled brightly at them once he was gone. “You boys all ready to get out of here?”

“No,” Sam muttered. “I want my dad.”

“Sam. Your dad’s not—”

“Mrs. Trotman?” Nicole called from the doorway, half-curled around it like she was hiding. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“This really isn’t a good time, sweetie,” she said. 

Nicole widened her eyes hopefully. “Please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important. It’ll only take a minute, I swear. It’s, uh—” Her gaze darted uncomfortably to the Winchesters. “It’s kind of private.”

When she wrapped her arms around herself and shifted back without moving her feet, Cindy Trotman crumbled. Probably smelled another kid she could “liberate” from an abusive situation. “Alright,” she agreed. “I’ll be right back, boys. Don’t go anywhere.”

They listened to her heels _click-clop_ down the hall, then grabbed their bags and crowded into the doorway. Dean glanced around the corner, made sure she was out of sight, then led Sam out the other way and down the stairs at the end of the hall. 

They pushed out the side door without anyone from the hospital seeing them and climbed into Bobby’s old Chevelle. It wasn’t the Imapala or Dad, but it was him and Sammy safe and going home. 

Bobby looked at them in the rearview mirror. “You boys all set?”

They were.


End file.
